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House Hansard - 197

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 15, 2023 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 197 - May/15/23
Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)
  • May/15/23 4:48:26 p.m.
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  • Re: Bill S-5 
Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague mentioned at the very end the things we need to fix about this bill that were considered out of scope, and I assume that is why they were not fixed in this iteration of the bill. However, Bill S-5 was introduced as a different bill in a previous Parliament. The Canadian Environmental Protection Act has never been enforceable. People knew that. One would think this would have been the first thing to be tackled by the government when it was fixing this bill after 24 years. I am just wondering why that did not occur to the government and why we now have to have another piece of legislation. I agree with him that we need it done as quickly as possible to make this bill enforceable. What is the point of having environmental protection if it is not enforceable?
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Context: House Hansard - 197 - May/15/23
Mr. Patrick Weiler
  • May/15/23 4:49:17 p.m.
  • Watch
  • Re: Bill S-5 
Mr. Speaker, I completely agree. We need to reform the way that environmental protection actions are done under the bill. I do not think that means the act is not enforceable. Rather, what these actions allow us to do is hold the government to account if it is not doing its job to enforce it. As someone who comes from an environmental law background, this is very much top of mind. I agree that it has to be one of the priorities. This issue was discussed in the report in 2016-17, when we went through it, and we have some options that were recommended and that we could move forward with. I hope this process starts very quickly, because we want to make sure that the public has trust in the way this regime will be operating. I think this would be a really critical way of making sure that we are going to build that trust.
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